It may not be a glamorous big-budget feature, but extras are being sought for a small film being shot next week in Scituate.

Lifelong Scituate resident Bates Wilder penned the screenplay.

“It’s a thriller,” he said of the film, ‘Caleb’. “It’s about a young woman who has a tragedy in her life; she loses her husband. The film opens on a grisly crime scene at her house. She’s there, covered in her husband’s blood. You don’t know what happened.”

The woman eventually finds herself in a homeless shelter after her landlord, who is going through his own financial hardship, is forced to evict her for not paying rent in months.

In the shelter, the woman befriends an older man who looks to her like a daughter.

“He’s an odd bird,” Wilder said of this character. “But he protects her and guides her and they become friends. They share stories of their lives.”

There are plenty of twists to the plot, including the climatic surprise ending.

Wilder, an actor who is best known for small roles in such films as “Mystic River” and “Shutter Island,” among other screen credits, and who had a reoccurring role on Showtime’s “Big Brother,” said he had never written a feature film before.

“I wrote this last summer and it was god awful,” he admits. “It was too long, there were too many characters.”

He said friends who read the original script all said they “were ready to rip their eyes out” after only the first few pages.

When he’s not acting, Wilder – a divorced father of five – teaches an adjunct program at Boston University.

“I teach acting to directors,” he said. “It’s a great thing, really. It gives them the chance to see what the other people have to do in the creation of an opus. It’s good for them because a lot of them, as directors, don’t understand the actors’ process. It’s actually a fun course.”

He said he teaches a similar course at Emerson College.

Up until ‘Caleb’ he said his writing had been limited to original scenes he would put together for his students.

“When you give them a scene from an existing movie to read, they would try to act the way the actors did in the movie,” he said.

Things changed when a friend called asking Wilder if he had any ideas for a short film.

“He asked about ‘that thing’ from last summer,” Wilder said. “So I wrote a treatment for it and gave it to him. I feverishly cut out characters and scenes. I cut it to shreds, but it became a movie that could be understood.”

With someone lined up to provide financial backing, Wilder said things began to come together with the film.

Wilder said he is going to play the role of the man the young woman meets in the shelter.

A member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) for over 20 years, Wilder said he got the acting bug after seeing two children perform a skit on the Ed Sullivan Show when he was in the third grade.

“They were terrible,” he said of the kids. “I went to my mom and said that they were terrible and that I should do it. She told me she would keep her eyes open for any notices in the newspaper that Ed Sullivan was looking for kids for his show.”

In the meantime, Wilder said his mother suggested he get into a drama club and start to do some plays.

“I did. And I loved it. And I kept loving it,” he said.

Wilder went through the Scituate School System and was part of the drama club at the high school.

After graduating, he attended the Boston Conservatory, majoring in musical theater.

“I learned in about a month that I would never be a professional singer,” he said. “Everyone there was so good.”

He found his niche in acting, however.

“I had done commercials and other stuff, but had always treated acting as a vehicle to become a star or that would make me rich,” he said. “When I finally stopped thinking like that it gave me the opportunity to understand and enjoy the art of acting. And it felt great. It feels great now, whether I’m making any money or not.”

Wilder said he has had “a lot of small parts in big movies,” and that he is often cast as the villain or a cop.

“I’ve played a cop ten times,” he said. “It’s because I’m tall, I’m big. I usually have short hair.”

Wilder’s family has been in Scituate for generations, and he said he has always wanted to film in his hometown.

“Scituate has been in a couple of movies, but you never know, this film could be a feature someday and just might showcase the beauty of Scituate,” he said. “I’ve lived in many places, but Scituate is always home.”

Be an extra in ‘Caleb’

Wilder said he needs about 20 women, from young adults to seniors, possibly with children, for a scene in the homeless shelter.

Shooting would take no more than a couple of hours.

He said he would need 20-30 men and women for a scene at a soup kitchen. Women who appear in the homeless shelter scene are welcome in the soup kitchen scene.

“I need a mix of people, young and old, etc.,” he said.

Shooting for the soup kitchen scene would take about a day.

Extras are not paid.

Anyone interested in participating should email the production company for further information at zaffrefilms@gmail.com by Sunday, May 5.